I liked the latest Zelda's. Sure, they have been easier, but they were still 'zelda' games, and they were still 'fun'

OoT was also incredibly easy. Most Zelda games have been real easy... and I agree about the lack of items thing, hopefully that'll change with SS...

Ah well. I expect SS to be the best Zelda game ever, yet no-one will appreciate it up until around 5 years after release, as per usual...

I hope so as well...

If NSMBWii, DKCR and SMG2 are anything to go by, they'll ramp up the difficulty massively, and add the Super Guide.

Which isn't a bad thing. I never understood the issue why so many disliked the Super Guide TBF...

But that's for another time. This is Zelda's 25th Anniversary year, so hopefully Nintendo will show us they can still do it like they could...

Sounds exactly like what have happened with Morrowind->Oblivion, Kotor->ME1->ME2 or Jedi Knight -> Force Unleashed and countless more examples from current gen.

Rol, you make a lot of valid points in your eight paragraph OP, but honestly everyone would love Zelda more if it had one thing.

That thing is hover boots.

WiiSports Resort? Definitely. I reached superstar status in Table Tennis and by that point, the computer opponents were constantly diving from one side to the other making saves that your character couldn't do.

But I don't see how this is relevant, since I was discussing difficulty in FPS games.

Congratulations, you are using the oldest argument against my original point, and it's still not any good.

 The problem here is that you're not allowing for a difference in inherent levels of appeal between a game like Super Mario Bros. versus a game like legend of Zelda, which is to say that Super Mario games (and sidescrollers in general) are based on factors that will appeal to a given portion of a userbase that increases roughly in proportion to the whole of a userbase. If you sell 100 million consoles, you can expect Mario to sell more than he would on a 70-million userbase.

Zelda is not like that. All Zeldas (especially the 2D ones, but the 3D ones can't avoid this either) operate off of value propositions that have a limited amount of appeal no matter what. You could take the original Zelda, carry over all the values that the nostalgiacore mourn and pine for, and it still wouldn't ever sell much more than Ocarina of Time. Zelda's ability to appeal to a userbase is limited by its genre and by its mechanics, and it will very probably never break the 10 million barrier in terms of sales no matter what they do with it. That said, this goes both ways, as Ocarina of Time selling to about 25% of the N64 userbase will attest. Zelda's sales are not determined or even really influenced by userbase, never have been, and probably never will be.

You will take note that LInk to the Past contained more optional swords than the Legend of Zelda did, comparably difficult dungeons (Misery Mire is more or less comparable to Level 6 in the original, though note Level 7 or 8), a doggedly aggressive overworld, and was probably the apex of the series in terms of a mix of difficulty and supplied direction. It had optional quests an items out the wazoo, optional powerups, optional areas of the map, zillions of secrets, emergent gameplay to make any other adventure series sit down and reconsider their place in the world.

But it still failed to drive growth in the series and was eventually outsold by Phantom Hourglass.

More, you're being intentionally misleading in implying that Wind Waker was the point where the overworld stopped trying to kill you - yes, even when you allowed that it was "the absolute latest". It is neither the first nor the most egregious. Ocarina of TIme takes the cake for both of those. Ocarina of Time is, in many ways, the easiest game in the series, and there are whole sections of the overworld where you might not run into any enemies at all, and if you do they're slow enough that you can just walk away from them or only do 1/4th a heart in damage anyway. Dying in Ocarina of Time is usually chalked up to simply getting used to working in a 3D world, since healing items are so plentiful. If you're careful, there is absolutely no excuse for dying in OoT. Yet it is the best-selling Zelda ever made, and will continue to be so until Twilight Princess passes it up sometime this year.

On the other hand, look at Majora's Mask and how it compares. More optional sidequests, stuff you don't really have to do, a more aggressive and dangerous overworld, a more pronounced level of difficulty on the whole, THREE completely optional swords that are not required to beat the game (four if you count the Fierce Deity's sword, but that would be stupid), an overworld that is incredibly dense in terms of things to do per square foot.... yet it only sold 40% of what its predecessor did. You can chalk that up to a lot of things, including the necessity for the RAM expansion pack and the time mechanic, but the point remains that the shift in values from OoT to MM that caused its decline was not matched by any theoretical boost it should have gotten from a return to more oldschool values in other areas.

Don't speak for "most" gamers. You don't know them, you haven't asked them, and you have no way of relaying their perspectives. Zelda is in no mroe trouble than at any other point in its life, and this will continue to be true even if Skyward Sword only sells 5 million copies.

Again: the values you propose aren't good enough.

And while I'm on that point

Zelda's fanbase is disproportionately female in comparison to Nintendo's other core IPs (saving only maybe Fire Emblem), and rigidly holding that oldschool values which didn't appeal to females at the time might be able to increase sales on the whole seems egregiously presumptuous.

Nah My sisters love LOZ. It's a guy and gal's game ;)

Remember that when arguing Majora's Mask, we have to take into account that it was 2000, the point when the N64 seriously lost steam and N64 blockbusters had to compare to the peak of Dreamcast fare and early PS2 titles. It's very similar to another debate ongoing here about the disparity between Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2, as much as we can account for material substantial differences between the games, in both cases they suffered from a marked dropoff in interest in the console itself, and varying market conditions

I didn't find Phantom Hourglass & Spirit Tracks easy at all. Just because you find Zelda easy and not challenging enough doesn't mean everyone does. I just want a more populated overworld, more sidequests (with meaning) and a realistic OoT/TP art style. The Zelda series is fine.

It's stupid to expect Zelda to have the growth and sales of Super Mario Bros anyway given that Zelda is a game for the core gamer (and so it should be and stay) and Super Mario Bros appeals to both the core gamer and expanded audience. Super Mario Bros will always have greater appeal. DWI.